I’m a publishing consultant and developmental editor for academic authors. To learn more about the courses, workshops, and services I offer, check out my business, Manuscript Works.
I dispense advice about editing and publishing on Twitter and Medium as @lportwoodstacer and through my Manuscript Works Newsletter.
My second book, THE BOOK PROPOSAL BOOK: A GUIDE FOR SCHOLARLY AUTHORS, was published by Princeton University Press in 2021.
Before starting my consulting business, I was a scholar and academic whose research focused on lifestyle choices and how they define, restrict, and empower us.
My most recent research project explored practices of non-use of social media; it built on my previous research into anti-consumption and other practices of cultural resistance within the contemporary North American anarchist movement.
I wrote a book based on my dissertation and many scholarly journal articles, but of all the things I’ve written, the most popular is “How To Email Your Professor (Without Being Annoying AF).”
I taught at New York University in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication from 2011 to 2015. There, I developed courses on social media, consumption & identity, and queer identities in popular culture. I also taught classes on fashion, subcultures & social movements, and advertising & society.
I earned my PhD in Communication, with a certificate in gender studies, from the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California in 2010. I did my undergraduate studies in Telecommunication, Information Studies and Media at Michigan State University.
I live in Los Angeles and, in 2021, I became a two-time Jeopardy champion.